Power Profiling - Now and Then

Often I am asked how my cycling power ouput compares now, to before my accident and amputation.

As I progressed with my training during 2009, and as my fitness continued to improve under Ric Stern's guidance, the answer to that question kept changing, mainly as I started to close in on pre-amputation power levels.

Now that I have a full year's worth of data from 2009, I decided to take a look at my annual power profile and see how it compares to pre-amp levels.

Below is aggregate power profile data covering the past 5 years. It shows my best power to mass ratio (W/kg) for each of 4 separate durations for the years 2005 through to 2009:


The power durations shown are:
5 seconds
1 minute
5 minutes, and
95% of my 20-minute power.

Each of these power-durations represents key elements of cycling fitness, with different energy systems being the primary contributor to performance at each duration. That's why it's such a telling indicator of your overall cycling makeup, and an excellent indicator of your relative strengths and weaknesses.

This is provided of course the profile does in fact contain data from best efforts for the duration. Given it's aggregate data for whole years, then I think it's a reasonable assumption. Nevertheless, sometimes the 1-minute column can still be under stated as that usually requires dedicated efforts not often performed in training or racing.

You can read more about power profiling in this original item by Dr Andrew Coggan here:
Power Profiling


So the group of columns on the left shows my best 5-second power to mass ratio for each year from 2005 to 2009. Each group of columns moving to the right covers the other durations, with 95% of 20-minute power shown by the columns on the far right.

What matters with power profiling is the overall shape of the profile, rather than the absolute numbers. The shape in this case indicated by the lines joining the columns, which I have shown for 2006 (orange line) and for 2009 (blue line). I chose those two years as they are the two complete years representing pre-amputation and post-amputation training/racing data.

I notice a few things:
- the overall shape of each line is similar
- my short duration power has taken a large nosedive
- my longer duration power to mass ratio is actually higher than previously attained

This clearly demonstrates that it's my sprint power that has suffered the most from my lower leg amputation, yet the predominantly aerobic power durations (5-min and 20+ min) have not.

This suggests a few things to me.

One is it's an example of how we are not force (strength) limited when cycling at aerobic power levels, since even though I have lost significant leg musculature and with it strength, I have still been able to generate the longer duration power.

Another is that the lack of a lower leg muscular-skeletal system has a significant impact on sprint ability. The lower leg matters a lot more in the generation of short duration sprint power, than for longer duration aerobic power.

What can I make of this information? Well for one I no longer have the sprint I used to, yet I am as likely to be as well set up for the end of a race as I was before, since I have the engine to deliver me there. But now I lack the finishing ability. My strategy and tactics in racing may need to be modified a little as a result.

I can still work on improving my sprint of course (all track/roadie riders should) but I would say that reclaiming pre-amp sprint power levels is not going to be anywhere near as "easy" as it was for aerobic power durations, if in fact it is actually possible.

It also points to me reconsidering what events I may in fact focus on. They may change as well.

Plenty to ponder with a power profile.

What's yours look like?

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Ground Control to Major Tom

A few of you that follow this little blog will have noticed my steady progress in fitness and form.

It has been going great and I continued with my progress in 2x20-min threshold tolerance interval efforts, culminating in an average of ~ 320W in 2x20-min efforts week before last (an all time PB), followed up with a couple of efforts over 300W a few days later.

Then I headed off to Adelaide for a week and a bit for a Cycling Australia coaching course. I had expected that week to be a light one from a training perspective and after a couple of busy days and some very ordinary weather on arrival (gale force winds and rain!) I got out for a ride on one afternoon after the course was finished for the day. Legs not too bad but still carrying a little fatigue. Nevertheless able to crank it out just fine.

But then something happened to my leg/stump that night. I have no real idea why but it decided to swell. A lot. When it does that then simply putting my prosthetic on is a struggle and very painful. Houston, we have a problem....

Indeed it took me about 10-minutes the next morning to gradually ease my leg into the prosthetic and stand up. It's really painful when that happens. I nearly didn't go to the course that day but I persisted, doing as little time on my feet as humanly possible. Over the next few days I had to repeat the process, gradually getting the leg in there in the morning.

The swelling gradually subsided over the following days but it remained painful. Suffice to say that any ride plans went out the window, even an invite to a local race which I was looking forward to had to be canned.

The real PITA is not knowing why it does this. It's not common but it's really crap when it does this.

So today, eight days after my last ride I tried a light ride to see how it was.

Not flash. Knee was very sore, putting any sort of effort down was not very agreeable, getting out of saddle was not an option and after 10-min the sore spot on the inside of my knee was starting hurt as well. So I pulled the plug after 15-min lest I create more problems. Try again tomorrow. Amazing how quickly the amputation side loses its form.

Hopefully it just needed a bit of a spin to get it moving again and will be better next time. Fitness should return pretty quickly provide the soreness goes. I'm sure gunna need it!


Other things:

Cycling NSW have still not advised on the selection policy for Track Nationals. It's now less than eight weeks to go and I have no idea whether/how selection will happen. At present, the draft selection policy suggests that no NSW para cycling rider will be selected. This is in stark contrast to all other states that are actively promoting as many riders as possible to compete.

It simply sucks and is quite demotivating, certainly not something you want overlayed when you are dealing with injury as well.


In the coming weeks I expect to spend a fair bit of time at the track, trialling a few things from a position/aero perspective as well as start the track specific phase of training. So let's hope this leg gets better quickly!

And on Friday I will be dropping my cycling prosthetic in to George at the ALS to have the outer carbon fibre shell completed. Hopefully that won't take too long. Then I'll be able to show off the flashiest bike leg in the country!

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Do the work, and it will come...

Today I had a training session in Centennial Park.

It was what I call TTIs (threshold tolerance intervals), which were done as two 20-min efforts, with about a 5-min easy riding in between each effort. They are very hard going, ridden at time trial pace. I've written about these plenty before and I've been doing a block of them lately.

As many of you know, I use a power meter on my bike to help monitor my effort as well as record my performance. I've been doing this for many years.

My average power for each TTI today was 314 watts & 313 watts respectively.

That exceeds my all time previous best 2x20-min TTIs (313W & 310W) in January-2007.

That's two years six months after my amputation and one year five months after I attempted to ride for the first time on an indoor trainer (10-min at 100W).

Do the work, and you will improve. Even if you are missing a bit of leg.

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Granfondo 2009

The countryside surrounding Santa Rosa, California:


In early October 2009 I participated in Levi's King Ridge Granfondo.

It was the finale to a week long visit to Santa Rosa, California.

It was a great week of riding and the weather was excellent! Being a city bound lad, the ability to ride for just a few minutes from home and find yourself on country roads winding through the vineyards was fabulous!

I am especially grateful to my very generous hosts, the Palladino clan. Steve, Sharon and Shannon went out of their way to make me feel very welcome, and Steve not only loaned me a bike for the week but also took me out for some great training rides in the week leading up to the Granfondo. What a great place to live and train!

A couple of pictures:

Out training in the days before:


On the morning of the Granfondo, Steve, Sharon & Shannon hosted a Team Boba breakfast, with Shannon cooking pankakes. Yumm!! They were gooood.


I was an honourary "Fightin' Boba" for the day and wore the team kit:

Here's Steve enjoying the ride along with some of the Boba crew:

The roads had some pretty steep sections at times and I saw signs like this indicating an 18% gradient a few times along the way:


Of course going down also means going up, here I am with Steve making my way up the final major climb of the day from Coleman Valley:

One of the funnier moments was on this climb when a few riders were passing a cyclist who was off his bike, hunched over and leaning on the top tube of his bike, no doubt wondering how he was going to be able to continue.

As we were approaching him, another rider started yelling in that uniquely enthusiastic American way "Come on buddy, don't stop now, you can do it, c'mon!! C'mon, get back on!!"

To which the reply from the hunched over rider was, "Shut up, I'm praying!" No doubt he was!

And here are some shots of the scenery encountered along the way:

I also managed a close up view of the redwoods with a little off road excursion when I overcooked it a little on one steep winding descent (and didn't quite have the emergency braking finesse I am used to as the brakes on Steve's bike, while very good, are opposite handed to what I normally ride). It was funny enough and no harm done to me, the bike or the local flora and fauna. Climb back up to the road, dust myself off and get going again. Last time I did something like that was about 25 years ago on a motorbike.

Anyone for lemonade?


The ride itself is pretty challenging, a 103 mile (166km) ride with ~ 9,000 feet (~3000m) of climbing. The more difficult sections were an average gradient ~ 10%.

Ride stats for the Granfondo:

Duration: _______ 6:04:27 (6:29:27)
Work: _________ 3882 kJ
TSS: __________ 389.4
Intensity factor: __ 0.802
Average Power: __ 178 watts
Normalised Power: 224 watts

All up, a great week. I can certainly recommend it!!

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Yowser!!!

Training continues apace. No easing up for me following World Masters Track Champs. None of this rest up for a month crap between seasons.

So with some good ol' fashioned solid endurance work during the week, today I was back to doing an old favourite workout, 2 x 20-minute threshold tolerance intervals (TTIs).

I've written about these before. Really top notch hard efforts designed to boost your power at threshold, which is the single most important physiological factor for success in endurance cycling.

Click here to read more.

Last time I did regular TTIs, was in October & November 2006, about six months before my accident. I've done a few as well since of course but it is interesting to note my progress relative to pre-accident levels.

In October & November 2006, my TTI power on road bike was consistently 295-300 watts. And in fact back then I was doing mostly 2 x 15-minute efforts rather than 2 x 20-min efforts.

In the above linked post, I note I also did a 2 x 20-minute TTIs with average power of 313W & 310W. That was January 2007, when I was right into some good form, had won an open crit and was cranking along nicely leading up to State & National Masters track champs (where I set some PBs). I note my comments at the time were that that was a "breakthrough workout" for me.

So how was today's effort? Well here a pic of the file (well the bit with the TTIs, I chopped off the commute to/from my training course).


That, my good readers, is 2 x 20-min TTIs with power averages of 306W and 307W respectively. OK, them's SRM watts versus Powertap watts, so a couple of percent for drive train differences, but still, that I gotta admit is pretty darn remarkable.

So it puts me at roughly 95-98% of pre-accident TT power.

And I'm only just gettin' started.....

Yowser!!

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Legs on fire!

Well, sort of.

At least that's how it felt racing last night at the Central Coast Track Open. It's been a few years since I've raced this carnival (for obvious reasons), that the ever energised Paul Craft of RAW Track fame organises. It's always been a favourite - all the good stuff you get from a country track carnival without having to travel too far - it's about a 90-minute drive from my place.

When I say good stuff, I mean you get value for money races. Lots of events, something for everyone and the usual Crafty entertainment value. Shame you can't say that for many of the events hosted in the city.

I went up early this year as they were desperately seeking extra commissaires for the junior carnival which was being held in the afternoon before the senior carnival. So I spent the afternoon checking junior gear rollouts and standing (sometimes sitting) in the sun making sure all the little tikes behaved themselves out there on the track. It's fun watching 'em go round.

Once that was over I pulled on the Bicisport skinsuit, pumped up the tyres and got out on the track for my warmup. Looking at the program I had been given a mark of 195 metres, which put me at the top of the C grade field. I think in days gone past I'd be closer to the 90-110 metre mark and in the B grade group.

For those not familar with what I mean, in Australia we have a form of track racing called a "Wheelrace". Riders line up on the track at their designated handicap mark, the gun/whistle goes and the winner is first past the post after a designated number of laps. So in theory all riders have a chance to win since the fastest riders have to complete a greater distance. The rider(s) off zero metres is/are called the "scratch" marker(s). So in this example, when I race the wheelrace I start 195 metres in front of the "scratchies".

Now what also happens is you can't have everyone who's racing the carnival on the track at the same time, so heats are run to determine who qualifies for the wheelrace final. There are many ways to do this so I won't bore you with the details.

Just before that race was the opening scratch race, which I came second in after a bit of collusion between two Bathurst riders prevented a fair sprint - with one deliberately blocking me for his mate (the winner also qualified for the wheelrace final). Collusion is not legal in track racing but the comms didn't pick that one up. Generally doing things like working hard to pull a mate along is OK but deliberately blocking another rider is a BIG NO NO - you must contest the sprint. I had a seriously good lunge at the line despite only getting to poke my nose out at the very last second. Damn I thought, the legs felt GREAT!!

Wheelrace heats were run as graded wheelraces and in my heat I was the next to last marker but I won my heat (and a few $ for my effort) by passing all riders in front of me. I think the extra motivation from the scratch race finish spurred me on this time. And good legs.

After the scratch race and wheelrace heat, there were Kierin heats, which I placed 2nd in to qualify for the final (three went through to final).

Then we had one of Crafty's special races, the "miss n out handicap". Simple race, riders roll out and every lap the last rider across the line is eliminated, except that in this case the A, B & C grades start at different points on the track. So in the opening laps a few A graders get eliminated early until they catch B and/or C grade. Once it comes together it reverts to a standard miss n out. Our race came together reasonably early so I did what I always do and be attentive to position in the bunch while other (often much stronger/fitter) riders get eliminated behind. In the end I was 4th last rider eliminated, with the remaining riders being the A grade road runner dudes. Once again, nice work legs.

Right after that was the Kierin final! I came second by about a wheel. And a few more $. Petrol money really.

Then the Wheelrace final. That wasn't so good as I had a slight mishap with my cleat off the start, which cost me too much distance to the riders in front and I couldn't make it up, so I retired gracefully and called it a night.

So six races with one win, three seconds, two finals and a 5th in the miss n out. And a few $ for my efforts.

On fire!!

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WTF is happening??

Ok, it's been a while and posting lately has been slow.

That's actually a good thing - I've just been really busy. I have lots to update on, so I'll get to it all. Eventually, LOL.

I had a fantastic trip to California to ride the countryside around Santa Rosa, participate in Levi's Granfondo and also deliver a seminar on training with power. So I'll get to those in separate posts later.

I also have been doing lots of training leading up to the UCI World Masters Track championships which were held last week. I had a really good championships, riding a good pursuit time and making the finals of both the scratch and points races. More on that later too.

Here I am am up front and personal during my Individual Pursuit last week:


I rode a 3:54 3km pursuit, which is about 6-7 seconds slower than my all time PB but it's still my 3rd fastest time ever. My average power was 375 watts.

Also, as part of the training I did some aerodynamic field testing, mostly for wheel choices, so I'll report on that too!

And some cool stuff on the coaching front as well..... like I said, I have been busy.

Ahead I have a really solid block of training in front of me as I prepare for the Track nationals in early February in Adelaide.

And more cycling performance experiments to perform.

And to finally finish off the leg - with an aero fairing.....

Also I go to Adelaide in late-November for a week long Cycling Australia coaching development course.

Stay tuned folks!!

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